Did you know that many of your favorite Time Travel Mart products and our general design sense–both for the Time Travel Mart and 826LA– originate from the brilliant designer, Stefan Bucher of 344lovesyou.com?
We decided to rewind time and ask about how things at 826LA became what they were always meant to be!
Thank you for taking the time to chat today. We’re so proud of the work you’ve created for us! How did you first get involved with the Mart, and what did that look like?
The original creators of the Time Travel Mart, Mac Barnett and Jon Korn, reached out to me way back in the fall of 2006, and asked if I’d be interested in designing a product line for the launch of the store. In a burst of megalomania I told them that I’d be happy to help, but only if I could design the graphics for the entire store. That led to a few years of creating the look of the Echo Park store, the initial line-up of products, one incarnation of the store site, and eventually to the rebrand of 826LA. Which we then painted on the Echo Park gate over the course of two days and nights with the help of a ton of fantastic volunteers!
It was an amazing experience, because Mac and Jon kept sending me the smartest and funniest copy I’ve ever worked with, and I got to play their visual straight man.
What were some of the challenges involved as you created the nucleus of our design sense?
Conceptually, the big challenge was to resist the urge to make funny designs. The design had to provide the setup for the writing to work. Leeches had to look like serious pharmaceutical packaging, Mammoth Stew had to look like a can you’d recognize in the canned foods aisle at your local grocery store.
That approach suits my personality, so I loved working that way, but when we opened up to other design volunteers in later years, that was always the big issue: People wanted to open their “crazy fonts” folder or get super colorful—and it ruins the joke. I often had to be the buzzkill, which also suits my personality, so it was fine.
The real challenge in those first years was creating a store full of products that all looked different. Other 826 stores were able to stock their shelves with tons of “store brand” products that all looked like part of one product line—the Superhero Store is a prime example. But the Time Travel Mart is a convenience store, and the thing that makes a convenience store look like a convenience store is visual chaos. Everything is different from everything else. We needed lots of distinct looks and we needed lots of units of each product to have a store that feels FULL.
Beyond the design work, it placed a big load on the shoulders of our production volunteers who were cranking out products.
The design of the store logo and the store itself came together easily. As with the products, we needed the design to be the setup for the conceptual punchline. We needed the platonic ideal of a convenience store, and to my mind, what you see today was the obvious solution. I don’t think there was ever even a second design up for discussion.
That was the real pleasure of those early days: Everything took shape very quickly and intuitively. Jon and Mac would give me copy, I’d often send back designs the same day, and we’d go into production the next day. It was design improv!
Are there any wishlist products that were just too impractical for this somewhat impractical store? What ended up on the cutting room floor?
Mac and Jon were prodigious, and I worked hard to turn every one of their scripts into a finished product design. There were a few ideas I couldn’t get a solid handle on, but all of those have since been made real by designers who joined the team a few years later.
We were all super excited about the Hyper Slush machine (which, please forgive the brag, I wrote), but it broke down hours before the grand opening, and never slushed again. But then Mac and John made the whole thing 10 times better with the hastily scrawled “Out of order. Come back yesterday.” sign.
My list of unfulfilled wishes usually involved money that wasn’t there—offset printed labels with special inks and foils and embossing, murals, ceiling installations, things like that.
I hounded Joel for years about putting the 826LA logo on the front gate. A few years ago, I finally got the OK to paint it myself over the course of two days and nights with the help of a bunch of amazing volunteers!
(Which I now realize I never wrote up as a case study for my archive site, but it’s on the client-facing site: https://www.344design.com/portfolio/826la/)
What were your expectations for the store and how has its reception surprised you?
Sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that the Echo Park Time Travel Mart started 18 years ago! The whole project had such an anarchic seat-of-the-pants let’s-put-on-a-show spirit that it was hard to imagine then that it would become such a fixture on the list of LA’s best kept secrets.
I’m always surprised that it does remain a secret for so many Angelenos, and yet it looms so large in the lives of the time-traveling few—be it through discovering the products or through being part of the 826LA tutoring program.
Going into it, I knew that 826 had other stores solidly established in other cities, but we had such a difficult birth—finding and losing locations, launch dates coming and going, always hunting for budgets—that I never allowed myself any expectations. The fact that the store exists at all—and continues to thrive—is a testament both to the 826 staffers and volunteers investing so much of their love and care over the years—and to the steadfast kindness of Judd Apatow and J.J. Abrams.
In the end, the Time Travel Mart reminds me of the Hunter Thompson quote, “One of God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”
Thank you so much for all of the amazing work you’ve contributed to 826LA and the Time Travel Mart! We’re beyond appreciative and look forward to continuing the collaboration!